A Population of One

by Constance Beresford-Howe

  “Marvellous old guy, he was.”

  “There’ll be a memorial service, I suppose —”

  “No, no; Archie was an atheist.”

  “He wasn’t. He was a Catholic.”

  I slip away. The glass bell is still intact. Through the blazing sun, the yellow-green and blue of painted scenery, the flash of silent traffic, I carry it carefully home. There, finally, the glass shatters. But I will never be able to describe how it is then with me. Grief has no vocabulary.

  The one surprising thing about the next few days is that I sleep a great deal. For the first time in my life I sleep ten hours a night, and sometimes even drop off for a nap by daylight as well. Unfortunately this does not last long. Sleep then deserts me completely, and I am left to drift through cycles of light and dark, stranded, dry, alert, endlessly awake. And this causes time to behave in a very curious way. Night and day cease to have any relation to each other or to me; so I keep the zebra curtains closed. I sometimes grill and eat lamb-chops at three in the morning. I may do a washing at ten, whether a.m. or p.m., or go to bed and doze at four in the afternoon.

  I go out only when absolutely necessary to buy food. The streets frighten me. Something bad and dangerous is at large out there. I stay home behind the curtains.

  Percy has settled down after those first suspicious hours long ago during which he growled at the furniture. He sits in the kitchen window bird-watching, or sleeps curled on my pillow. Occasionally, though, he pads restlessly through the apartment, yowling. This primitive noise gives me a deep satisfaction I don’t trouble to analyze. I never discourage his yells. I like to hear them.

  Louis-Philippe comes to the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I talk to you a moment, mees?”

  “All right.” But I keep the chain on.

  “You been sick, I don’ see you around?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but we have a few complaint. Tenants in Six and Two, they say, ‘I hear a child cry at four every morning’ — well, I know you got no kids, but your cat she’s disturb people just the same.…” His Indian eyes rest on me curiously. It is the first time he has looked at me without a trace of lechery. Instead he looks wary, as if something in my appearance, while creating no pity or even interest, may mean trouble for him.

  “Mr. Mackenzie. We’re moving out at the end of May.”

  “Yes, I know, but —”

  “Then tell Six and Two that.” And I close the door.

  This is the first occasion for some time when I have talked to anyone. The encounter leaves me restless. I walk up and down. With vague surprise I notice a sort of track in the carpet. I must have been doing this quite a bit lately. But it’s good to pace up and down, up and down. This time, though, the restlessness mounts, builds, swells, like a dangerous supercharge, until I’m afraid of it.

  I take a couple of Aspirins. They are no help. Then I remember the little bottle of tranquillizers Bill gave me years ago in Richmond. I take one. Return to walking up and down. The drug must have lost its potency. I take two more. Nothing whatever happens. I can’t remember now just how many I’ve had, but swallow one more. Then, without any plans or motives whatsoever, I put on a light coat and leave the curtained apartment. The elevator slides down noiselessly and delivers me into the lobby. I see through the heavy glass doors that it is night.

  Outside, the darkness is quite warm and still. A faint sweetness of lilac hangs in the air. The streets are quiet, and my shoes make a loud, hollow tap on the pavement. I turn uphill, toward the dark height of the mountain. It would be nice to walk on the earth. Nice to be up there alone in the silent, velvet dark.

  I find steps and climb them. A broad pathway winds upward. But it is not the familiar scuffed, almost rural picnic-path I know. City lamps follow its curve; the trees keep a respectful distance. Still I climb on mechanically. I have forgotten why. A mounted policeman rides slowly past, giving me one careless glance as he jogs by.

  Abruptly I come upon a sort of clearing before a small chalet-style building set among trees. Spotlights in these trees shed a green glare that bathes a large crowd of people standing about on the grass. Many of them are in evening dress. They are all chatting and laughing. Some couples stroll a little away from the rest, their arms or hands linked. I stare at this scene for some time in wonder. Why are all these elaborately dressed people here on the mountain at night? Then I remember. The chalet is a new little summer theatre. This must be intermission-time. Slowly I move closer and mingle with the crowd. A pleasant theatre-smell of cigarettes, new fabric, perfume, and fresh programs floats on the night. No one so much as glances at me. “Why, Bottom, thou art translated,” I think vaguely. Of course no one can see me under this freckled ass’s head. No one ever has — but one. Who was that? It doesn’t matter. He’s gone. I can’t remember his face.

  Suddenly I recognize one of the women, in a long green gown of some delicate material that lifts in the warm air. It is Molly, with Harry. They stand shoulder to shoulder but turned a little aside from each other. They are not talking; in fact Harry is reading a newspaper, frowning intently over it. He has become stouter. A soft little chin doubles itself under his beard. Neither of them notices me.

  As I turn away I see someone else I know. Her dress is short, of brown crêpe with a yoke of lace. I know that dress. I know the old-fashioned worn gold rings set with diamonds on her thin hand. It is my mother. But when I move toward her she frowns coldly and turns away to disappear in the crowd.

  There is Bill Trueblood. He would like to avoid me, but it is too late. He frowns too, impatient but polite. “Enjoying the play, Willy?” He looks very elegant in a blue velvet jacket. “Have a cigarette?” But I see a spider in the case he holds out and jerk away, almost losing my balance. “No? Good setting for Chekov, isn’t it? Didn’t see you at Convocation. Or at the service for Archie. Out of town, were you? I must say you don’t look too well; get yourself a good vacation. I’m going in for a sinus operation next week; then it’s off to Halifax to recuperate. Take care. See you around.”

  A buzzer is sounding from inside the theatre, and people begin to drift inside. I see George MacKay — or is it Emma’s husband? — something seems to be wrong with my eyes. His arm is around a very young girl in yellow with waist-long dark hair. She gives a great yawn as they pass me, showing all the coral interior of her mouth as candidly as Percy does. Whoever he is, he nods pleasantly to me as they go by, and says, “Hi there, Milly.”

  Music sounds from inside. Everybody is gone now except a small man who sits on the steps and tilts a flask to his mouth. It might be Gerald Wellesley Doyle.

  “You left me all alone,” I say to him.

  “What’s that, baby?”

  I look at him steadily, thinking ‘You left me all alone with her. Remember once you told me she was a cold, selfish woman? I didn’t believe you, of course. I gave her my whole life. And she didn’t even really want it. Maybe it was you that really needed me. Shall we be two horses laughing?’

  “Baby, you worry me,” mutters the little man, putting away his flask.

  “You are making a mistake,” I tell him coldly. “I don’t know you.”

  “Sorry. I do apologize.” With a somewhat blurred bow, the little man, now on nimble feet, turns and goes inside. I realize then that my father and mother will never come back: I have seen them truly and for the last time. The spotlights glare on the deserted green-yellow of the scene. All the actors are gone, but me. Who will dismiss Caliban? If that is my part.

  I move off up a narrow path and continue my climb. Energy hums through me, though my feet feel heavy. I am only vaguely aware of twigs and brambles that tear at my legs and coat. It is darker as I move up higher. The path is hard to see. Once I stumble and fall, rising with earthy knees and stinging palms. After some time I go back to that place and pick up my shoulder-bag.

  On and on, the ground rising as if it breathed. The distant, muttered roar of the
island city floats around me like a memory. When I look down at the tide of light, it sways and drifts; it is an illusion. Yes, I understand it all now. There is no more to know.

  I took the tranquillizers not to die; only to quiet a raging pain, and to achieve this distance. They have done their job at last. I can go back now.

  But I stumble again on the way down. This time I feel very dizzy. It is hard to get up. Too hard. Instead I drag myself a few feet off the path onto a grassy area thickly overhung with bushes. They form a sort of shelter. The earth under me feels soft. The air is warm. I sleep.

  “You’re crazy. She ain’t dead.”

  “Aw shit.”

  I sit up, not without difficulty. Every moving part is stiff and sore. The dirty faces of two squatting little boys confront me at close range. Their gaze is full of pleasurable curiosity untainted by compassion. I fumble to extract twigs and curls of dry leaf from my hair.

  “You got mud on your face, lady.”

  “So have you.”

  My head feels very large and my limbs thick, as if I had swollen in the night. But I know where I am, and who. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are in their proper places, not deplorably in each other’s beds as they have been lately. Best of all, perhaps, I have things to do and the intention of doing them. The clumsy thickness of my body makes me impatient, that is all. Getting to my feet is an enterprise that has to be achieved in instalments, and with effort. The boys watch, interested. At last I am upright, breathing heavily and hanging onto a low branch for support.

  “Do you know what time it is?” I ask them. It is the first time for a long while I have wanted to know the time.

  “Quarter to nine.”

  The air is soft with coming rain. The sky is silver-grey.

  “Will you hand me that bag there, please?”

  One of them seizes the long strap and drags the bag up toward my hand. I clean my palms and face with a tissue soaked in cologne, and tie a headscarf over my chaotic hair. Then, balancing with one or two unsteady crises that greatly amuse the boys, I turn my grubby coat inside out so the reverse side of Black Watch tartan is outermost. As soon as I have put this on and slung the bag over one shoulder, my entertainment value disappears, and so do the boys. Like Crusoe rescued, I now look too much like the dull rest of human creation to be of the slightest interest. No one but himself knows how separate, how uniquely different, the island-dweller will always be. This makes me smile, using stiff muscles.

  Slowly I make my way down to Westmount Boulevard, where I find a taxi to take me home.

  Percy meets me at the door, yelling indignantly for his breakfast.

  I drink a lot of coffee. Then I pick up the phone and ring the number of a real-estate company.

  A week later I am sprinting wildly across the dirty marble concourse of Central Station. Several fellow-travellers with whom I collide in varying degrees of violence glare at me irritably. Of course the club car is the very last carriage of the Turbo to Toronto, so I have to run the whole length of the platform, suitcase battering my legs without mercy. The conductor, a silver-haired man of episcopal dignity, is intoning “En Voi — ture,” as if I needed any urging. Hastily I scramble aboard, thinking, “What a ridiculous effort just to get back where I started from a year ago.” The doors hiss shut like an answer.

  I sink, breathless, into the nearest empty seat. The bald man beside me in the window seat looks up from his Gazette to say cheerfully, “Just made it, eh?” There seems no polite answer to this, so I make none. I wonder whether Percy is safely aboard the baggage car. And that is the one and only philosophical speculation I intend to have on this trip. Travelling light this time. No intentions. No projects.

  An old woman in black across the aisle frowns with disapproval when I sway against her in the effort to heave my suitcase onto the overhead rack. She is knitting something white in small, dark hands knotted with age. One wonders what kind of bereavement it can possibly be that has plunged her into such intense mourning. She wears laced-up black shoes, black stockings, black dress; even a black hat, skewered with jet pins to her meek white hair.

  The train skims past the flats, factories, shops of west-end suburbia caught in the cheerful act of rape on areas still innocently and endearingly green. We cross the bridge over sparkling water. Picking up speed, the Turbo aims us at Toronto with a formidable air of purpose and significance, just as if this journey were not, like most, circular. It feels like a long, long time since I advanced upon Montreal at the same speed and with the same illusion of progress. And since then, absolutely nothing has happened to me, unless you count a comic sequence of deceptions and self-deceptions, some sad, some just ridiculous. Then the meaningless, violent blow of loss.

  All this would be depressing if one allowed it to be. But I am determined not to brood over those absurd plans, hopes, fears, all vanished now, totally and forever. I look at the old widow across the aisle with her black stockings, dowager’s hump, and air of sour endurance, and instruct myself to be grateful that at least I don’t look like that. There’s no visible difference in me at all after this year in Villette. A developed sense of irony doesn’t show.

  “Cigarette?” the bald man asks. “Hot for May, isn’t it? Off to Toronto for a visit, are you?”

  “My sister had a baby boy this morning. I’m going to look after my young nephew while she’s in hospital.”

  I take out my magazine and open it purposefully. The memory of George MacKay is still alive and kicking among the dead remains of The Project. This nice man with his pink skull and Masonic ring is safe from me. Unfortunately, the article I’m now assiduously studying for his benefit is headlined “Achieving the Female Orgasm.” I close the magazine, trying not to laugh.

  “What did you think of the election results?” I ask.

  “Oh, just what I expected, really. Bourassa’s all right. At least he’ll keep Quebec in Confederation.”

  “Well, I was a bit surprised he was what Quebec wanted after all … a true-blue accountant. Bit of an anticlimax. The fact is I’m a bit of a … separatist myself.”

  “So am I, same way as I’m a romantic about the Acadians and the Doukhobors. That’s what this country is all about. Differences. But there’s nothing like owning a few shares or a few acres of land to turn a romantic into a realist, right?”

  “I suppose so. My notary is a kid fresh out of Laval; you’d expect him to be with the revolutionaries, but he told me he voted for Bourassa. Come to that, I voted for him myself. It must be becoming a property-owner that did it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve just bought a big stone house with three fireplaces and a garden. Big, high rooms, ceilings with garlands of flowers moulded into the plaster, that kind of thing. And it cost me about a third of what a house like that in Toronto would fetch.”

  “Big family, eh?” asks the Mason absently.

  “No, just one.” I think of Percy, who is doubtless making life hell for the baggage-car attendant.

  The bald man drifts amiably back to his newspaper and I sit back and close my eyes. I think of my new house, of the broad floors with their borders of inlay, the wide, high windows looking out at the city and the dark hill at its centre. It will be good to live there alone. It’s good now to sit back and say nothing, wrapped in my own privacy. Restful to be ignored. Peaceful to be all but invisible. The old woman’s needles click steadily on. Curious that at her age she should find it worthwhile to make a jacket for some baby to be sick on. But perhaps that’s her way of not letting God down. Mine was to buy that house, all twelve rooms of it, braving all Lou’s squawks and hisses of protest.

  A boy drifts down the aisle, holding a transistor like a poultice to his ear. The speaker is belching out that song about poor Mrs. Robinson, and his listening face is blank with pleasure. ‘Much you know about Mrs. Robinson, my lad,’ I think. But when I consider the case of acne the poor kid has, I’m willing to admit he may have some idea after all. One seat up from me sits
an exquisitely dressed woman of perhaps fifty, with jewels flashing in her pierced ears and on her delicate hands. She has a repetitive sniff. I time it: once every two minutes. A pregnant girl manœuvres her bulk toward the washroom, carrying her new identity in front of her wearily. She sighs, as she goes by me, with so much self-pitying importance that I could get up and hug her. No, this trip is not, after all, exactly like the last one. It’s completely different, in fact. More interesting. Who knows, perhaps I am too. I intend to believe this, anyway, because otherwise knowing Archie and loving him would all be stupidly wasted. I won’t have that. Nor am I going to brood over his memory like a fetish. No black stockings for me.

  Yes, I am alone, I think, as train and landscape scoot past each other, making their own statement about Canadian isolation. I am alone. So are countless thousands of other people — a fact which doesn’t help one damned bit. Solitudes rarely touch, much less merge. Mine will not change. I know that now. I will remain alone and what I am — what my parents made me — till the end. Is there any point in resenting that?

  I will always be alone. Single. Celibate. And I will make no more ridiculous efforts to be otherwise. I belong to no sisterhood, unless it is of aunts. I am a schoolteacher. A bachelor. A cat-owner. Soon I will be a solitary householder, surrounded by the furniture of my parents’ lives. I will take up gardening. One day at a time is how I will live. Perhaps I’ll become a bird-watcher or go to yoga classes. Doubtless I will lie awake at night, and sometimes ache and sometimes weep. But by day two tough cords in my neck will develop from keeping my head up and my jaw shut. I intend to ask for nothing and clutch at nobody, not even Dougie.

  I shall look in no mirrors, except for laughs. If I feel like it, I will get fat, or adopt Christian Science, or rent a dog.

  Loneliness is just a condition, like arthritis or claustrophobia. Incurable. And far from enviable. But it’s my condition, and I’m at last prepared to face it; even accept it. Eventually, in spite of my talent for being absurd, it may be possible to salvage a kind of dignity out of it. There is a modest satisfaction, even a sort of art, in island-dwelling. Lucy Snowe found it, and so will I, in time.